1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a cartridge, a combination of a cartridge and a printing device (or portion thereof) and/or a printing material supply system including the cartridge and a printing device.
2. Related Art
Latest cartridges generally have a circuit board with information regarding printing material (e.g., information on an remaining amount of printing material). For attachment of this cartridge to a printing device, the circuit board on the cartridge is electrically connected with the printing device through contact of cartridge-side terminals with terminals on the printing device. With size reduction of the terminals, it is of great importance to properly attach the cartridge at a designed attachment position.
Various mechanisms have been proposed for attachment and detachment of a cartridge to a printing device. Examples of such mechanisms are disclosed in U.S. Publication No. 2005/0151811 (which corresponds to JP-A-2007-230249), U.S. Pat. No. 7,008,053 (which corresponds to JP-A-2005-022345), U.S. Pat. No. 6,276,780 (which corresponds to JP-A-2002-019142), U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,955,422, 6,074,042, and 7,018,030.
U.S. Publication No. 2005/0151811 discloses a cartridge with a latching lever 3 and electric contact terminal pads 102. Lever 3 includes an anchoring portion 6 for engaging with the printer. The anchoring portion 6 is disposed far away from the contact pads 102. Because anchoring portion 6 is far away from the cartridge terminals, the engagement with the printer can offer only limited contribution to the accuracy and stability of positioning of the cartridge terminals with respect to the respective printer terminals.
In addition, lever 3 in U.S. Publication No. 2005/0151811 needs to be long enough to reach a location accessible by the user so the user can operate it. It also projects far away from the side wall of the cartridge. Such a large lever results in a larger cartridge, which can also result in a large-size printer, in which the cartridge is attached to and detached from, as well as bulky packaging for transportation and distribution of the cartridges, which in turn increases transportation and parts costs.
Also, the cartridge structure that connects the anchoring portion 6 to the cartridge-side terminals includes a flexible section of the lever 3. Even though the anchoring portion 6 might be securely engaged with the printer, vibration generated during printing operations can be transmitted through the flexible section of the lever 3 to the cartridge terminals, and so can influence the positioning of the cartridge terminals with respect to the printer terminals. This is particularly a concern for on-carriage type ink cartridges, such as those disclosed of U.S. Publication No. 2005/0151811, because they are mounted on a printer's carriage, to which the print head is attached. In on-carriage printers, the carriage is scanned back and forth over the print medium during printing operations. The ink cartridges in the carriage undergo great acceleration force with each change in scan direction, in addition to other vibration generated during printing operations.
The lever in U.S. Publication No. 2005/0151811 is formed integrally with the cartridge and is elastically deformable. With this configuration, the material used to produce the cartridge is limited to a material with sufficient moldibility for making this configuration, and also with sufficient flexibility and durability that is needed for the lever to elastically deform during engagement and disengagement with the printer.
The lever might plastically deform under operations by the user. Such plastic deformation of the lever may cause positional misalignment between cartridge-side terminals and printer terminals, which could result in poor electrical communication. Plastic deformation also reduces the durability of the lever. Also, special measures, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,018,030, must be taken during packaging of the cartridge to prevent creep deformation of the lever while the cartridge is packaged, especially when the cartridge is packaged in a vacuum package.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,276,780 discloses a cartridge without any memory or electrical terminals. Because this type of cartridge requires no electrical connection with the printer, there is no need to include structure or configuration for maintaining stable positioning and alignment of cartridge terminals to printer terminals.
In addition, the cartridge is attached to the printer by a latch mechanism 132 (in FIGS. 9-16 of U.S. Pat. No. 6,276,780) that is disposed on the printer. Cartridge-side latch ramps 220 that engage the latch mechanism 132 are far away from the pivot axis of the latch mechanism 132, in the direction in which the cartridge is removed from the printer. As a result, when a resilient member 156 or compression force seal 152 applies to the cartridge a force (indicated by arrow X in FIG. 12 U.S. Pat. No. 6,276,780) in the direction in which to the cartridge is removed from the printer, this force can be easily converted into a force that releases engagement of the retainer portion 134 from the cartridge latch ramps 220, so that the cartridge might become separated from the printer during use of the printer. Because the engagement configuration disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,276,780 includes this inherent risk of the cartridge becoming separated from the printer, it is not suitable for use with the configurations disclosed in U.S. Publication No. 2005/0151811, which require proper contact between the cartridge terminals and printer terminals. Moreover, contact between the cartridge and printer terminals in the configurations in U.S. Publication No. 2005/0151811 applies force from the terminals of the printer in lateral direction to the cartridge, so that the cartridge might move in the in lateral direction. The latch mechanism 132 of U.S. Pat. No. 6,276,780 is not suitable for the cartridge of U.S. Publication No. 2005/0151811 at least for the reason that it might not be able to match the lateral direction movement of the cartridge, so that the latch mechanism 132 becomes detached from the cartridge.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,074,042 discloses an ink cartridge with electrical contacts 54. As shown in FIGS. 12A to 13B thereof, the electrical contacts 54 are at the leading edge of the direction in which the cartridge is mounted into the printer. With this configuration, when the cartridge is mounted into the printer, the electrical contacts 54 of the cartridge press flat against spring biased electrical contacts 104 of the printer. Metal oxidation, oil, or other non-conductive matter at the outer surface of the metal electrical contacts 54 can become sandwiched between the conductive metal of the cartridge and printer electrical contacts, possibly hindering electrical communication between the cartridge and the printer.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,955,422 discloses, for example in FIGS. 2a to 2d thereof, a cartridge 1 that has a memory device 7 with electrodes 7a. The electrodes 7a are aligned substantially parallel to the direction of cartridge insertion into the printer. With this configuration, the printer electrodes 106 slide across the surface of the circuit board (on which the electrodes 7a are formed) for a long distance. The surface of the circuit board is typically covered with an electrically insulating resin material. When the printer electrodes 106 scrape against the circuit board, they can damage this insulation so that fragments of the insulation flake away from the circuit board. The insulation fragments can get caught between the printer electrodes 106 and the cartridge electrodes 7a, and become a cause of poor or otherwise unreliable electrical communication between the printer and the cartridge.
As shown in FIGS. 5 to 6B of U.S. Pat. No. 6,955,422, the printer is provided with a leaf spring 103 that exerts an urging force that presses the surface of memory device 7 against the printer electrodes 106 when the cartridge is mounted in the printer, and that moves the cartridge 1 upward when the cartridge is pulled out of the printer.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,008,053 discloses in FIG. 5 an elastic piece 40 provided on the printer. When the cartridge is fully mounted in the printer, the lower end 40a of the elastic piece 40 abuts against a flat surface 12a at the upper portion of the projecting portion 12 on which the electrodes 14 are located. The abutment between the lower end 40b and the flat surface 12a restricts upward movement of the projecting portion 12. However, the configuration of U.S. Pat. No. 7,008,053 includes no means located near the projecting portion 12 for restricting downward movement of the projecting portion 12. As a result, projecting portion 12 is fairly free to vibrate vertically during operation of the printer and therefore the electrodes can become misaligned or disconnected from the printer terminals.
In the presence of various mechanisms for attachment and detachment, there is a need to reduce the total size of a printer for better usability and ease of installation. For reducing the size of the printer, it is typically necessary to reduce the sizes of a large number of components forming the printer and relevant elements. These components and relevant elements include a cartridge attached to the printer and a cartridge mounting structure for attachment of the cartridge.
For improved use of the printer, information regarding the printing material contained in the cartridge (for example, information regarding the remaining amount of the printing material) is often displayed on the monitor of the printer. The cartridge attached to this printer would have a circuit board with a memory for storing the information regarding the printing material. The circuit board has terminals (cartridge-side terminals) used to send and receive information to and from the printer. The information regarding the printing material is transmitted between the memory and a controller of the printer through the contact of these cartridge-side terminals and terminals on the printer (device-side terminals). It is accordingly necessary to maintain stable electrical connection between the cartridge-side terminals and the device-side terminals.
As will be described below, there is no known mechanism to meet these requirements in a fully acceptable manner.
This problem is not limited to a cartridge containing ink for printing but is also commonly found in any of printing devices and/or cartridges configured to supply or eject various other printing materials (for example, toner) as well as ink.
Consequently, by taking into account the above problems, there is a need to enable a cartridge to be stably held at a designed attachment position. There is also a need to ensure stable electrical connection between cartridge-side terminals and device-side terminals and a need to attain size reduction of a cartridge, a printer and a printing material supply system including the cartridge attached to the printer.